Ian Fleming Interviewing Raymond Chandler

Here’s a cool interview someone dug up from from 1958. It’s Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond novels) interviewing Raymond Chandler (author of the Philip Marlowe novels), and it’s apparently the only recording of Raymond Chandler’s voice. It takes place one year before Chandler’s death and six years before Fleming’s death.

It’s fun listening to two friends and authors, who will both still be widely read over fifty years later, discuss their insecurities and disect their protaganists. They mainly praise each other, but Chandler does tease Fleming a bit on a couple decisions he made with Bond.

It’s especially interesting to hear them reference future works when we now know the outcome. Chandler mentions Philip Marlowe getting married in his next story, which is a reference to the novel he was writing when he passed away, Poodle Springs. Fleming states that Bond would never marry, but we know now that he did eventually marry in a later novel – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I think, although I haven’t read that far into the series yet.

It’s a gem of a recording, although the quality of sound isn’t great. If you don’t care about the introduction, the interview starts at 5:42 in the first video.